Thanks Be to God

Thanks Be to God

Amen. I invite your attention this morning to Psalm 103. If you'll turn there with me for our scripture reading, we're not going to read the entire Psalm, but we'll be looking at a number of verses at the beginning of it. So Psalm 103. A Psalm of David. Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveeth all thine iniquities? Who healeth all thy diseases? Who redeemeth thy life from destruction? Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies? Who satisfyeth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the Eagles.

And let's ask God to bless the reading of His Word to our hearts. Father, as we thank you for these words now, we pray that as we get into the service today and to the message that would help us to apply them once again. Thank you for all you've done. Help us to be a thankful people. This time of year is a good reminder for us of the attitude and the posture of heart that we need every day. You command us to give thanks in everything. Help us, Lord, to inventory our lives and see if there's any way in us that is not thankful. If there's anything, Lord, that we are complaining of, Lord, help us to put that aside and help us to be truly a thankful people we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

You probably know if you've heard me preach for any time that I am a fan, I'm a fan of, I enjoy whatever we want to say that. Etymology, like the study of where our words came from and understanding the meaning historically and all that. And I was thinking about the word thanks or to give thanks this week. And I discovered something I did not know and it is that the word thank and the word think are what are called etymological pairs. In other words, they're related. Those words are very, very similar. They come from the same root actually. We have some things like this in English, like the word ward and guard. We have whole and health, their pairs here and there, words like that. But this word think and this word thank, well, to think means to consider something in your mind. But to thank, it had the idea of a good thought, of gratitude even in our thoughts, of being grateful in our thinking. Of course, that needs to go past our thinking, right? But I just thought it interesting that how we think has a lot to do with thanksgiving, doesn't it? How we think.

Let me go a little further with that thought. When we were without Christ, we were described in Ephesians 2:12 as having no hope and without God in the world. We were without God in the world. But there's more that the Bible says about that. What does that look like to be without God in the world? Well, Ephesians 4, let's look there. Ephesians 4 and verse 18, we're going to come back to our text, but in Ephesians 4 and verse number 18. We'll notice here what it says, we, like other Gentiles, blinded by sin, walking in the vanity of our minds, we had, it says, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them, that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts. There is an ignorance. There's an alienation from God, but there's also an ignorance because of the blindness of their heart.

Now, thank God, he saved us from that lifestyle. He saved us from that way because if we kept going in that way, we would have come to the point like it's described in the next verse that we are past feeling. We are beyond hope, not because there's no hope in God, but because we just won't respond to Him anymore. Thank God there was a day that we did respond to Him and thank God that He was faithful in knocking on the door of our heart and saying, you're without me, you're without hope. And the glorious light of the gospel or the light of the glorious gospel dawned upon us. And we said, I believe, it's a wonderful thing, but even as Romans 1 tells us, look at this path I was mentioning, people going further and further without God in this world with no hope alienated from Him, what's going to end up happening?

Well, Romans 1 describes what ends up happening with people without God who reject His offer of life. We see in Romans 1:28, let's look there. Romans 1, verse 28, it says in that verse and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. Well, this is even people who reject Him in nature, even reject the God they can see in nature, but it says they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient. They're not convenient. They're not, what's that mean? It means they're not fit. They're not proper. They're not appropriate, right? We see a lot of inappropriate, unfit things happening in the world around us. In fact, Paul with the ultimately that these are the last days will be perilous times. Men will be lovers of their own selves, lovers of pleasures. One of the things he says about them is that they will be unthankful, unthankful.

What I'm trying to get at with these passages that we're turning to today is that God is not in, they don't want God, those who reject the truth, whether it be just the basic truth about the existence of God in His creation, natural revelation, or whether it be they have opened the Bible. They've studied the Bible and they see what God has to say or they've heard of the preaching of the Word of God and they reject the truth and they hold the truth in unrighteousness. They suppress it. What is being said here is there is not a desire to think about God. And therefore we see that those who do not want to think about God lead very unthankful lives, unthankfulness is a hallmark, a characteristic of those who do not want to think about God because, well, why would you thank God if you don't want to think about God? Why would you thank Him in the first place? So they're not thankful to the design of the Creator of God who they could clearly see in the things that He's made and so they professed themselves to be wise. Look at us. We're the ones, you know, thanks science, right? Thanks science for all that we've done. Well, how did you even discover that in the first place if there were not established constant laws in place that you could rely on to make these observations and to perform these functions and these tasks that we've learned how to perform, right? If you didn't have some kind of stability there, where do we think that stability came from? Where do we think that constancy comes from?

Well, the sins listed in Romans are the abuse and misuse of the created vessels God has given us, mind and body. They are the abuse and misuse of what God intended for us when He gave us this body. He gave us this mind. He gave us this tongue. He gave us these, now all that we have, the ability to think, right? He gave us the ability to think. In fact, His desire, we see it in the Old Testament even that way, to love His command. It's to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, strength and to love thy neighbor as thyself. That's God's intention in His creation of us.

If I gave, trust me, we're coming back to Psalms, okay? If I gave you a chainsaw and I said, hey, you can borrow this. You know, you probably wouldn't go out and beat it up, you know, and return it back and David would probably kill me if he… I don't think David will lend out his chainsaws. But anyway, if I gave you some, I'm just using a chainsaw for instance. You would take care of the chainsaw and if you broke something on it, you would probably, you know, buy the bar for it or something like that. I would hope that I would do that. I hope that each one of us would want to return it in the condition that it was, that we are stewards, right? And we should be, by God's grace, faithful stewards of what He's given to us. God has given us these bodies not to do with them whatever we want to do with them. And this mind to do with it, whatever we want to do with it, we've used to, right? We were fulfilling the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the mind. We were as others, children of wrath. Thank God.

When we were alienated from the life that's in Him, He shined in and showed us there's more to life than what you're doing. There's more to life. It's in the life. This life is the wicked. Do not have that mindset. The wicked, Psalm 10 describes that through the pride of His countenance, He will not seek after God. In fact, it literally says that God is not in all His thoughts. God is not in all His thoughts, the thoughts of the wicked.

Turn back over with me now to Psalm 103. It is said that we can say from experience that the gem diamond is more brilliant when it's placed against a dark background. The velvety dark background that they have in that little box you get it in, a diamond ring or a diamond necklace or something like that. And what am I standing up here doing today? All I'm doing is I'm hoping, I'm praying to take the gem of God's word, and His grace and say, look at this. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't God's grace wonderful? Should we not be thankful as He would desire and commands us to be? Well, God is wonderful. God's grace is a wonderful thing, a reality.

Now we're told here in verse 1 of Psalm 103 to bless the Lord. The Psalm David says bless the Lord, literally in the Hebrew to kneel before the Lord. We saw this morning, Jehoshaphat, and the people, they prostrated themselves before the Lord and praised the Lord, didn't they? Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. And all that is within me. Everything I have and that I am belongs to the Lord. Once again, I am a steward for a period of time in this earthly vessel. Now my life will extend certainly beyond as we were talking with the children the other day. But my life is just beginning eternally in its part of this in this earthly body, but I will live with a glorified body for ages upon ages, eternity. But here I am to bless the Lord. It's interesting the word of the New Testament is where we get our word eulogy from. Bless, the word for bless in the New Testament is the word to speak well of, right? To speak a good word, we talked about the idea, thoughts to think was good thoughts. Well, to bless is to speak good words, to speak words of thanksgiving to God and praise to His name for all that He's given us.

Don't our words come from our hearts? Don't they come from our thoughts? Well, they should, right? And unless we're being hypocritical, but ultimately even a hypocrite, his true thoughts will come out in his speech. So from our hearts, all that is within us, let us bless His name. Bless the Lord. Oh, my soul, you know, John tells us that God is love. God is love. And when we think about God, we need to think about who He is. God's not just love. He's just, He's holy. But He is love.

There's a little word that we see a lot of times in the Psalms. It's said at the end of a particular verse and that word, selah. It means pause. That's literally what the word means. Pause and meditate, right? Pause and think on these things. Pause to think on these things. Well, we need after each one of these things we're reading here in Psalm 103 this morning, we need to pause and think with thanksgiving. We need to pause and think with thanksgiving to the Lord for all that He's done.

I have known of organ donors. I'm not personally an organ donor, but I know those who have donated organs or I know those who have received organs from another individual. Many times it will be from someone who's died and their organs have been harvested after their death and they allow another person to live. Sometimes a living donor where you have a kidney, one kidney that's been donated to the recipient. And oh, how grateful, you saved my life. You extended my life. When that person receives that organ, you know, I've seen this thing in hospitals. I haven't actually been there to see it in person, but I've seen videos of what they do. They call it an honor walk where the person is, there's no hope for them to continue to live and they wheel them down the hallway. This person has decided they want to donate their organs and the hall is lined with friends and family that are paying last honors to that person for their willingness to do that.

And I think while that is wonderful and that is great, if they're willing to do that for another person, how much greater that Jesus Christ gave His life for us that He died that we might live. Meditate on these things, think on these things and be thankful. If you will think on it, you'll meditate. If I'll meditate on all that the Lord has done for me, we will have no reason to be unfaithful, will we? We'll have no reason to be complaining if we think about all that the Lord has done for us. We have an immeasurable debt to pay and it's not a debt for sin. It's a debt of love to the Lord. Jesus Christ already paid the sin debt. He's already made the ransom payment in full for our sins. But we have a debt of love that we owe to the Lord.

In verse 2 of Psalm 103 it says, bless the Lord, oh my soul and forget not all His benefits. Reminds me of what Sister Pete was playing for the offertory this morning. Lest I forget, I love for me, lead me to the offertory. Forget not all His benefits. Maybe you're familiar with that hymn by William Rees, the "Here is Love," and I think it's the first verse says, here is love, vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood, when the Prince of life, my ransom shed for me, His precious blood. Who His love will not remember, who can cease to sing His praise, He shall never be forgotten through heaven's everlasting days. In love, He's done all that He's done for us. All He's ever done has been motivated by love for us. He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. That is the God that we serve.

In fact, we can say as we look at our lives that every good gift and every perfect gift coming from above, from the Father of lights with whom there's no variableness, neither shadow of turning of His own will begat He us with the word of truth. He is the reason we're even here today. He is the reason that we have hope. He's the reason that we have eternal life. He's not a cold, calculating God like some would paint Him to be. He's not an austere and hard master, although He may put us through some hard things. He does even that in love because He knows what is best for us. Just like our children at times may think, mama and daddy are being hard on me. But it's not because we don't love them. Right? It's because we want what's best for them. They may not understand why at the moment. And of course, we're nowhere near what our Lord is, but He's perfect in all His ways. He loves us with a perfect love. He does all that He does in our lives because for good, for our good and for His glory.

I was reading something that someone shared with me this past week by Oswald Chambers. He said, the only basis on which God can forgive us is the tremendous tragedy of the cross of Christ. To base our forgiveness on any other ground is unconscious blasphemy. The only ground on which God can forgive our sin and reinstate us to His favor is through the cross of Christ. There is no other way. Forgiveness which is so easy for us to accept cost the agony at Calvary. We should never take the forgiveness of sin, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, our sanctification in simple faith and then forget the enormous cost to God that made all of this ours. Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the cross of Christ to forgive sin while remaining a holy God. This price had to be paid. Never accept the view of the Fatherhood of God if it blots out the atonement. The revealed truth of God is that without the atonement He cannot forgive, He would contradict His nature if He did. The only way we can be forgiven is by being brought back to God through the atonement of the cross. God's forgiveness is possible only in the supernatural realm. There's only one way that we were to be saved. It was through the atonement, through the payment that was made on that cross for our sins.

Speaking of which, remember what Romans 4:7 says and we found it in the Psalms as well, but blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered, blessed, truly blessed are those whose iniquities are covered, whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. And we see here in verse 3 as well, it says He forgiveth all thy iniquities and He who healeth all thy diseases. He's forgiven you of your transgressions. He heals all thy diseases. Well, when we look, we don't believe in divine health in this life. Yes, God does heal us and has healed us of a number of things, but that does not a blanket expectation that God is immediately and universally going to heal every issue and every ache that we've got because that would be living in, not in reality. It's not that God's not able to do that. He can, but sometimes He leaves a thorn in the flesh for a reason. Sometimes He allows us to go through things so that, as Paul said, because of the abundance of the revelations or because He wants to teach us things. It's not, it would not be in God's glory or in our best interest for Him to always just say, well, I'm sorry, you know, I've sent that physical thing to you. I'll take that away from you right now. But we must believe that He's able to do that and we've seen instances where He does do it for His glory.

But He has healed something far greater than our physical bodies. He heals our souls' diseases. He heals those things within the human heart that no medicine can heal. No doctor can touch that. No psychologist can remedy it. There's nothing else. What do we, when nothing else could help? Love lifted me, right? When nothing else can help. But I think about those things in the spirit. We've been talking about that, preaching about that on Sunday nights, right? The sins, even of our spirits. What things in our hearts? What diseases? What self-will and envy and pride and malice? The Bible tells us to put these things away, right? But only as we look, like in the Old Testament, they looked when Moses held that serpent up on the pole. We look to Him. We look to Him who heals the souls' diseases. We look to the Lord Jesus Christ in what He's done for us.

So, verse 4 says that He redeemeth. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction? Amen. He's done that. He redeems our life from destruction. And it says who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies. God has bought us for Himself. He's redeemed us for Himself. We belong to Him. We sing that hymn, belonging to now. I belong to Jesus. He just belongs to me, not for the years of time alone, but for eternity. We're bought from. What did He redeem us from? Well, we've talked about how He's redeemed us from the slave market of sin. He redeemed us from sin because we were in bondage. We were slaves. You know a slave had no rights of his own. He had to do as his master told him to do, right? And we had no ability in ourselves to redeem ourselves from destruction. Were it not for the price that was paid for ourselves, the price that was paid on the cross.

Remember what Lamentations 3:22 says? It says there, it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. It is of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed because His compassions fail not. He has redeemed us. He has mercifully paid the price and He crowns us with loving kindness. He crowns us with tender mercies. He satisfyeth thy mouth with good things, verse 5 says, who satisfyeth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the Eagles.

Well, once again, that's not talking about all your joint problems going away, right? That's not talking about necessarily every, all the physical, you know, so that you have the elasticity and the plasticity of youth again. This is talking about the outward man perisheth, the inner man is renewed day by day, right? The inner man is renewed so that we can do what? We can walk and not be weary. We can run or we can run and not be weary. We can walk and not faint. We can mount up with wings like eagles because of the faithfulness and the mercy of God.

And so we see that He feeds us, doesn't He? Just like a shepherd feeds his sheep. So God feeds His people. He feeds us with what we need. He satisfies our mouth with good things, but we must daily feed. We must daily taste and see that the Lord is good, right? We must daily be in His word. If we're going to be led into green pastures, if we're going to have our soul restored, then we've got to say, Lord, open my eyes. You're not going to behold wondrous things out of thy law. We've got to be in the Word of God.

Sometimes we complain because we haven't been looking to God. We haven't been thinking about God. We've been thinking about, you know, the cares of life, right? We've been weighed down with all the things that are going on in how expensive everything is and how hot it is and how many gnats there are and all that kind of, you know, I mean, this cancer and that thing over here, we can get our mind on any number of things and get our eyes off of the Lord. But I guarantee you, if you're truly thinking on God, meditating on Him day and night, you will be like, as David says in Psalm 1, like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bringing forth fruit. He satisfieth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the Eagles.

We have all this imagery, the strength of an eagle, mounting up. We have fruit coming from a tree, you know, all these things that God is providing, this God strengthening His people. The Lord is my shepherd. Psalm 23, we know it well. I shall not want. I won't lack any good and needful thing. The Lord is my shepherd. He's the one that leads me beside still waters. He's the one that restores my soul. He's the one that leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake. And then I even see down at verse 5 how he said that the Lord is the one that prepares a table before Him, even in the presence of His enemies. That would be the easiest time, not to think, you know, the Lord satisfied me with good things, right? In the presence of enemies, but even in the presence of my enemies, the Lord prepares a table before me.

And surely the confidence, the hope, goodness, and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The Lord doesn't always lead us in the paths of ease, does He? He doesn't always lead us in the, sometimes we have to go through the valley, right? And sometimes we have to go through the dark places. The valley of the shadow of death, even there, though, we need not fear any evil because the Lord is with us. His rod and His staff, they comfort us. He will supply every need that we have. He will meet every need in our soul.

And so may we not be discouraged. We spoke this morning about how the wicked think, right? The wicked are, they are blinded and ignorant to God. They're alienated from God. They don't think about God. They don't like to think about God. In fact, well, we might say it, a person can go so far in their wickedness that they don't even like to entertain the thought about God. There's some people that will listen to a gospel presentation. There's some people who will at least entertain some things about there must be a God out there. And yet there are those that will go so far in their sin and their rebellion against God that they don't even want to think about it.

In God's grace, by God's grace, should we be on the other end of the spectrum? We want the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day. We should want, and the reason that is, is because the just live by faith and they want to think more and more about God. Well, the more disappointed we get in this world and we should be disappointed with this world, we should be, you're like David says, rivers of waters run down my eyes because they keep not thy law, right? It is the abounding of the iniquity, but that we shouldn't allow that to make us grow cold and not love the God. We should, it should drive us to cleave to Him.

Thank you, Lord, for what you've done for me. Thank you for saving me. I'm no better than anyone else, Lord, you stooped down and you saved me out of the pit that I was in and you saved me from the pit of hell and Lord help me to praise thee. And if there be any wicked way in me, get it out of me, deal with it. Get it out of the way. He will, He will any diseased thinking that's in my soul and get purged out so that I can think the way you'd have me to think. And our thoughts affect so many lives, don't they? Because they end up becoming words and actions. Our thinking is reflected in the way that we live.

So may we bless the Lord with all that's within us today. May we bless the Lord early in the day, as we're going through the midst of trial and the midst of the day. And even as we go to bed at night, may our first and our final thoughts of the day be thankful thoughts. Lord, what are we saying in that little chorus? Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me whole. Thank you, Lord, for giving to me thy great salvation so rich and free. May the Lord bless each one of us this Thanksgiving with true gratitude. May we be overwhelmed with how much the Lord has done for us. And know, like the psalmist said, surely, certainly, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for these thoughts from your word this morning. We thank you for the example of the psalmist who with all that was within him blessed your holy name. We pray, Lord, that you'll help us to do likewise. Help us, Lord, to not pattern our lives after this old world, but Lord, help us to pattern our lives after what you've revealed about yourself to us. The more we think on thee, Lord, the more thankful we will be. We will realize just how blessed we are to know the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Help us, even today, help us this Thanksgiving to count our many blessings, to name them one by one as we go forward. Now we pray these things and ask them in the worthy name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.